Apple and Google have been working on developing an industry specification to detect unwanted location-tracking devices for quite some time now. Well, the two companies have completed the development and finally launched the specification.
It’s called ‘Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers.’ Apple is implementing this specification on iPhones with iOS 17.5, which it started rolling out yesterday, and Google is doing so on devices running on Android 6.0 or newer version of the OS.
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Android devices and iPhones supporting this specification will display a notification saying “[Item] Found Moving With You” if an unknown location tracking device, which is compatible with the industry specification, is found moving with you. Once you click on this notification, you will be able to see the tracker’s identifier, play a sound on the tracker to locate it, and see instructions to disable it.
At the moment, there’s no information on how Google is making this feature available on Android devices. It could be doing so with an update to Google Play System. That way, it can make this specification available across all Android devices irrespective of the brand they come from. Currently, AirTag and location-tracking devices based on Google’s Find My Device network support this specification.